3 Latest News Breaks in Emerging Tech

Corinna Underwood has been a published author for more than a decade. Her non-fiction has been published in many outlets including Fox News, CrimeDesk24, Life Extension, Chronogram, After Dark and Alive.

Engineers at a Georgia Tech laboratory have created a robotic arm that can be attached to amputees, enabling the technology to be embedded into the human body. The robotic arm has motors that can power to drumsticks. The first drumstick is manipulated by the musician’s arms and electromyography (EMG) muscle sensors. The second stick is tuned into the music being played and is able to improvise.

Professor Gil Weinberg developed the prosthetic device for drummer Jason Barnes who was lost his right arm at the elbow after being electrocuted two years ago. Weinberg’s device allows Barnes to control the speed and bounce of his stick with sensors that respond to his bicep muscles.

DNA Technology Merges with RNA to Transport Nanoparticles

A research team led by Jong Hyun Choi, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Perdue University, has developed a unique type of molecular motor made from DNA. He then demonstrated the range of it potential by using it to transport a nanoparticle from one end of a nanotube to another.

Inspired by biological motors that have evolved to aid the function of cells, the device is made from a sequence if four chemical bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. Though the motor’s mechanism is slower than that of the movement of natural motors, biological motors cannot be controlled, whereas DNA motors can be switched on and off.

Though the project is still in its early stages, potential applications include chemical manufacturing and processing, and drug delivery.

Texts at the Tip of Your Fingers

A new technology called AMP-D or Ambient Pervasive Display can allow you to read your texts or emails from your phone on any nearby surface, even the palm of your hand. Developed by researchers at Ulm University in Germany, the technology is controlled by hand gestures and uses a 3D sensor that enables the projector to adjust its focal length as needed.

Though the technology is a little cumbersome at the moment, the team is working to make it more streamlined. They project that they will have developed a wearable device small enough to be worn around the user’s neck within four years.

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Imagine the convenience of being able to measure your household's use of water, find out why your smoke alarm is going off when you’re not home or check your insulin level, all with an app on your smartphone.

According to Palmer Luckey, founder of the renowned OculusVR, the future of neurogaming is practically upon us. Neurogames involve a combination of technologies that incorporate the player's nervous system into the game itself. The technology may include items such as EEG headsets, brain wave sensing and eye movement tracking devices and heart rate monitors. Throw virtually augmented reality into the mix, and you have a fully immersive gaming experience previously impossible. Developers of PrioVR just completed a successful Kickstarter campaign to produce a full body tracking suit, which enables a gamer to explore a virtual world.

Swiss researchers at the EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) have developed a robot that can see objects thrown at it and reach out and grasp them. The robotic arm is 1.5 meters long. It has seven joints and a four-fingered hand. Its built-in cameras give it "vision," and its computer produces a mathematical model of the object's projected course. The robot is able to rapidly change position to grab hold of the object, such as a water bottle or ball. The team, headed by Ashwini Shukla, a researcher at the EPFL, have taught the robot how to reach in several directions and co-ordinate its arm and fingers. They hope that the robot will be of use retrieving debris in space.

One of the latest trends in the arena of mechanobiology is a micro-pump designed to autonomously deliver insulin in response to an individual’s glucose levels. Developed by Samudra Sengupta and his team of associates from Pennsylvania State University, the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, the device is self-powered and is capable of the autonomous delivery of small proteins and molecules in response to biological stimuli, according to phys.org.

The Pip-Boy 3000 is a wearable wrist computer that looks like it came straight out of a video game, and in fact, it did. The device was inspired by the Fallout series of video games. A team of Reno Hackers—Ashley Hennefer, Colin Loretz, Christopher Baker, Andrew Warren and Ben Hammel—created the cuff device for NASA's space wearables competition, part of the International Space Apps Challenge 48-hour hackathon.

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